Nottingham University Business School

Undergraduate Programmes

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS STRATEGY 2

[N13KL2]
Case Analysis Report- Philips vs. Matsushita: Competing
Strategic and Organisational Choice.

Radia SYED
Student ID: 008093

COPY [1]

Radia Syed: 008093

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Table of Contents
Table of Contents......................................................................2
Executive Summary..................................................................3
Introduction.............................................................................4
Motivations in overseas expansion............................................6
Means of internationalisation....................................................7
Mentalities...............................................................................7
External forces of conflicts faced, and corresponding responses 10
Philips: Forces for Local Responsiveness.............................................................10
Matsushita: Forces for Global integration & Forces for Worldwide learning.........11

Strategic objectives and means of building competitive

advantage..............................................................................13
Philips: seeking multinational flexibility..............................................................13
Matsushita: seeking global efficiency..................................................................14

Innovation models and corresponding challenges faced............17

Philips: Local-for-local.......................................................................................... 17
Matsushita: center-for-global model....................................................................18

Organisational-models adopted & means of managing the

changes.................................................................................19
The road to developing transnational organisations..................20
Conclusion.............................................................................. 22

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Executive Summary
This report aims to examine the different strategic and restructuring
approaches adopted by two of the biggest competitors in the global
consumer-electronics (CE) industry- Dutch firm Philips and Japans
Matsushita- as they evolved from the pre-World War 2 era to afterwards,
with both forced to constantly enhance their products through building
the appropriate strategies that stem from their internal corporate
structures and internal linkages.
Additionally, main findings illustrate how both firms evolved their
organisational structures and strategies that allowed them to create
distinctive competences, and their simultaneous responses to the
external environments; how global competitiveness depends on the
organizational-capability, and the limitations of classic multinational and
global models that Philips and Matsushita respectively implemented are
also illustrated.

While its been concluded that Philips and Matsushita have successfully
developed

their

competencies

and

reformed

their

structures

into

transnational organisations style, key recommendations include: aligning

product-divisions with each other to allow mutual understanding and
coherence of the firms goals, and configuring their value-chains such
that it leads to cost savings yet maximum efficiency, by adopting
globally-efficient tactics like their competitors since lowering costs are a
priority given the current economic-climate.

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It should be noted that due to the limited word-count, only relevant,

selected points have been discussed.

Introduction
Two of the biggest giants in the fast-paced industry of consumerelectronics (CE)1, Hollands Philips and Japans Matsushita are no
strangers to state-of-the-art innovation. Known for their fierce rivalry that
dates decades back, both have emerged with distinctive organisationalcapabilities and competencies, formed from their individual culturalbackgrounds and various strategies adopted throughout the years.

Striving to be leaders in the competitive CE-segment through maximising

different parts of their value-chains, both firms aim to offer the best
consumer experience with top-class innovation and high-quality in their
offerings. Yet despite their far-reaching presence and success, theyve
also

encountered

several

challenges

in

their

paths

to

becoming

international leaders in the CE-segment, as a result of their organisational

structures, external threats, and other external conflicting objectives that
may have hindered their growth.

The global CE-industry is forecasted to reach US $932 billion by 2017, with a CAGR of
5.37% over the next five years. (Fritz. J, Lucintel, 2012)
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This report thus will address the various strategies they adopted, their
motivations for internationalisation and organisational structures, and the
internal and external challenges they experienced.

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Motivations for overseas expansion

Figure-1

Motivations to
internationalise
Tradition
al
motivatio
ns
Emergin
g
motivatio
ns

Pre-war
Philip Matsus
s
hita

Post-war
Philip Matsus
s
hita

Market Expansion

Resource seeking

Strategic-asset
seeking
Seek Scale
economies
Increasing R&D
investments
Global scanning &
Building Learning
capabilities

: of less importance

: of high (er) importance

: very important

Hollands small market-size made Philip explore new markets abroad.

Here, being exposed to new technologies or market-needs in the
individual countries stimulated and required more innovative productdevelopment via R&D, as seen by its product-portfolios expansion
(radios, X-ray tubes) that prompted Philips expansion further into larger
international markets, to meet consumers demand for fresh inventions.

Conversely, ever-falling prices due to increased manufacturing efficiency

that characterises the CE-industry- whereby competitors manufacturing
continues to shift to lower-wage countries, propelled Matsushita to
reduce and move its electronics production-costs to the Americas/Europe,

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enabling it to achieve long-term economies-of-scale via resource-seeking

factors.

But pre-war objectives differed from post-war objectives. Therefore, as

strategic

resources

are

intangible-resources

involving

the

firms

technology and core-competencies like knowledge/employees skills etc.

(Dunning, 1993), Matsushita was also motivated by strategic-asset
seeking objectives because to beat the competition, manufacturers were
forced to constantly enhance their products or support emerging
technologies. Being fast to market, it did so via technology-exchanges,
R&D-partnerships and licensing agreements with rival Philips. These
alliances allowed it to benefit from other firms technical-knowledge
bases given its copycat reputation, to strengthen their competitive-edge
in the CE-market.

Means of internationalisation
Figure-2

Pre-requisites/reasons for
internationalisation
Regions the firms
Locationexpanded into &
specific
year of entry
advantage
s
Japan, Australia, Brazil,
Canada, Russia (1899)
USA, France (1912)
Philips
UK

China, Poland, Mexico

(2002)

means of
Ownership
-specific
advantage
s

Organisati
onal
capabilitie
s

Matsush

Japan/home market
(1950-1960s)
Southeast-Asia,
Central & South
America (1960s)

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Canada, USA, UK (Mid

1970s)
North America, Europe,
Southeast-Asia (1986)

: of less (or no) importance

(N13KL2)

: of high importance:
important

: very

Internationalisation is a process by which firms increase their involvement

in international business activities (Johanson et.al, 1993).
Thus Philips began internationalising by exporting to diverse markets
(Japan, Canada) first that possessed the above advantages, then entered
joint-ventures in other countries to gain market acceptance because the
focus/objectives were different at different time points. It then entered a
contractual agreement with GE to exchange technology between them.
Similarly, while Matsushita also relied on a licensing-agreement and
technology-exchange with rivals Philips at first to improve its R&D, the
1950s saw it begin exporting its black-and-white TV-sets, to eventually
setting up an overseas branch office- MECA, in USA.

Mentalities
Mentalities

evolve

over

time.

Initially

internationalising

with

multidomestic strategic mindset, Philips wished to exploit inter-country

differences, like differing TV-transmission standards. Viewing their market
as multidomestic reinforced their objective to localise their products in
response to varied customer needs/buying preferences, in countryspecific markets. As this would later see decentralised-control occurring
through

establishing

sales/production

subsidiaries

worldwide

and
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consequently foster close interaction with local-markets, Philips could

later customise both its product-offerings and marketing/distribution
strategies accordingly for each market. Despite being cost-intensive,
being locally-responsive could ensure steady future revenue.

Figure 3. (Own construction.)

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Matsushita initially seeked a global outlook/strategy, intending to gain

global market-share leadership (post-war), and viewing markets as having
common needs, underlining its goal to globallystandardise by having
world products to build volume. Exploiting low-cost production locations
in its value-chain led to lower cost-structures, whilst maintaining
centralised-control over its overseas production-units to oversee quality
improvements.

Therefore,

purchasing/manufacturing

achieving
and

global

economies-of-scale

product-development

were

in

amongst

Matsushitas goals.

Figure 4. (Own construction)

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External forces of conflicts faced, and

corresponding responses
Figure 5

Organisat
ion

3 sets of Conflicting Environmental Forces

(Bartlett, 2011)
Forces for:
Forces for:
Forces for:
global
local/nationa
worldwide
integration
l
innovation &
&
differentiati
learning
coordinatio
on &
n
responsiven
ess

Philips
Matsushita

: of less importance

: of high importance

: very important

Philips: Forces for Local Responsiveness

Figure-5 suggests this maybe Philips most challenging force due to
consumers high switching-costs, reinforcing the need for rapidly-evolving
innovation to satisfy their demands. Moreover, given European countries
differing technical-standards and assuming that certain consumer-groups
rejected standardised global products homogenized product design and
performance because of the countries diversity that Philips major
markets were in, e.g. India and China, these growing pressures for
localisation encouraged Philips to provide globally-innovative yet locallyrelevant products (matching their decentralised model) to satisfy various
emerging,

country-specific

consumer-needs

in

the

CE-segment

for

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healthcare, lighting- Philips Australia created the first stereo-TV, and

Philips of UK created the first teletext-TV.

Japanese competitors who were shifting electronics production to lowwage areas like Asia/South-America and simultaneously capturing the
audiocassette mass-market, were threats too, pressurising Philips to
abandon its V2000 videocassette format in 1970, due to Philips NorthAmerica deciding to outsource VHS-products being manufactured under
license from Matsushita. This minimised the risk of future financial losses
for Philips.

Technological-innovations convergences also made Philips dispatch

numerous product line-managers to its most competitive markets, to link
product-divisions more directly to markets abroad and brainstorm new
ideas: domestic-appliance and electric-shaver lines moved to USA and
Japan respectively to getting closer to the customers/market-segments.
Assuming this would facilitate interaction amongst them, this would both
make: identifying consumers needs easier by being accordingly updated
with them, and managers more globally aware of new competition and
evolving technologies and skillsets that they could acquire later to sustain
Philips innovative edge.

Matsushita: Forces for Global integration & Forces for

Worldwide learning
Global-integration is defined as business operations coordination and
control, across national borders (Cray, 1984). As increasing post-war

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brought

convergence

in

(N13KL2)

technological-innovation,

Matsushita sought globally-integrated operations to take maximum

advantage of economies-of-scale, by standardising products instead of
localising, which enhanced customer preferences through its now global
products/brands offered.
As Kogut (1984) suggests that integrated MNCs gain competitiveadvantages from exploiting differences in national resource-endowments,
Matsushita accordingly responded to Japans rising labour-costs by
shifting basic production and assembly-operations to South-America and
Europes low-wage countries. With a tightly coordinated network of its
standardised TVs, VCRs, and DVD-plants now in high-cost end markets
and

low-cost

manufacturing-centers,

global-integration

rewarded

Matsushita with new cost-savings and global-efficiencies (Chen, 2006).

Continued

cost-cutting

by

closing

inefficient

plants,

as

part

of

Matsushitas VC-21 plan that included changing old mass-production

assembly-lines to flexible manufacturing systems in Japan and 170
international plants. The systems ability of quick, low-cost switching of
one product-line to another created economies-of-scope, improving
Matsushitas cost-conscious image in the competitive post-war era.

Moreover, Matsushitas international subsidiaries innovative thinking was

faltering. So Matsushita integrated domestic and overseas operations by
shifting operational control nearer to local markets: Japanese headquarter
functions relocated to North-America and Southeast-Asia by fostering
R&D partnerships & technical exchanges with other firms to collaborate

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on new innovations. Although this required transferring Matsushitas

manufacturing practices/know-how and process technologies across
countries through its expatriate Japanese technical-managers, this would
at

least

ensure

creative

ideas

and

consistency

in

product-

design/manufacturing, thats essential in CE. (Figure-6)

However,

forces

for

worldwide

learning/innovation

gained

more

importance for Matsushita towards the end 90s, again due to its
international

subsidiaries

lack

of

innovation

(Figure-5).

Rising

convergences in digital-technologies and high product-development costs

pushed Matsushita to a: licensing agreement with Microsoft in 1998 to
use the Microsoft-Windows CE operating-system in Matsushita's future
audio-visual products and personal-computer devices, as a means to fill
the technology gap (BB, 2011), and additionally, a strategic-alliance to
innovatively collaborate on projects combining digital audio-visual and
personal-computer technologies. This promised to bring consumers closer
to converging digital technologies benefits.
Figure-6.

Own construction. Taken from McKinsey Consumer & Shopping Insight Report,
2012
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Strategic objectives and means of building

competitive advantage
Both firms strategic-objectives were designed according to what the
conflicting forces were. Although multinational-flexibility, innovation and
learning,

and

global-efficiency

are

all

necessary

to

help

obtain

competitive-advantage, not all were equally important to Philips and

Matsushita.

Although Philips objectives differed at various different points due to

circumstances like WW2, different CEOs and economic-conditions which
led it to renew its strategic intent, its initially aimed to seek multinationalflexibility by hedging macroeconomic risks against the forthcoming war
and its aftereffects by shifting its research-laboratories that were the core
of its technological innovations to England. Despite this relocations highcosts, time/effort, Philips ensured that its most vital assets were at least
protected in a politically-neutral country against further external threats,
temporarily. This would maintain consistency; not disruptions- in productdevelopments planning. Yet the 1930s Depression also caused countries
to impose trade barriers, causing Philips to build local production-facilities
in its foreign markets to ensure its flow of products.

Considering the above, Philips shifted more towards achieving globalefficiency over time, due to increasing globalisation that saw Japanese
competitors capturing the audiocassette and microwave-ovens mass
market. As sustainable competitive-advantage is the ability to offer

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superior customer value on an enduring or consistent basis, where

competitors are unable to easily imitate the firms capacity for value
creation (Collis et.al, 1995), to build this, Philips diversified its portfolio
from CE to data-systems and telecommunications, to spread risks and
widen choice for various consumer types in different markets. Since this
diversification

required

product-standardisation

and

thus

low-cost

production to minimise these high investments/costs, Philips set up

production-facilities in low-cost regions like Asia, and Eastern-Europe, thus
resulting in scale-economies and accordingly, major cost savings (Chen,
2006).
So

Prahalads

Integration-Responsiveness

(IR)

framework

(Figure-7)

suggests that Philips lies here due to its multidomestic strategy, where
focusing

on

external

flexibility

through

national-responsiveness

dominates with strategic decisions decentralized to each country, to

enable adaptation of products, services, and/or products to local/countryspecific customer demands (Ghoshal, 1987). This happened through
Philips
resulting

widely

dispersed

physical

and

human-resources (Figure-8),
in

Figure-7
Matsushita

Philips

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decentralised control of its sales organisations in fourteen European

countries, China and Brazil.

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Figure-8

After post-war growth made its own Japanese markets growth saturated,
Matsushita began seeking global-efficiency in new markets, because
beating their Western counterparts in operational-effectiveness, they
could simultaneously offer: lower costs and superior quality (Porter,
1996). Employing these, since global-efficiency involves lowering inputs
value/costs or increasing outputs values, put Matsushitas position in
Figure-7 under a global strategy which views the world as a single
marketplace and thus, offers standardized products (Kedia, 2002).

Although in practice, this strategy is employed by firms serving multiple

host country markets with internationally branded goods being produced
from a single location- in Matsushitas case, Osaka, Japan- nevertheless,
Matsushita gained a competitive-advantage over others by exploiting
national differences in labour costs: shifting basic production to low-wage

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regions like Asia/South-America generated major cost-savings and scaleeconomies.

Figure-7
Matsushita

Philips

As cost-advantages arise from performing particular activities more

efficiently than competitors, activities then are the basic units of
competitive-advantage (Porter, 1996). Thus Matsushita achieved new
economies-of-scope upon upgrading its mass-production techniques to
more flexible manufacturing-systems worldwide, because this allowed
quick, low-cost switching of one product-line to another. This flexibility
could parallel market-demands in CE as they change, now allowing
Matsushita to enlarge its product-portfolio/product-lines.

As most Japanese companies imitate and emulate one another (Porter,

1996), eventually Matsushitas inability to develop innovation overseas
started faltering in the 90s, resulting in purchasing US-based mediaentertainment giant MCA Inc., for $6.6 billion, to dominate technological
hardware and entertainment industries growing alliance. Thus given
software

and

Matsushita

hardware

obtained

technologies

movie,

recording

simultaneous
and

developments,

broadcasting

industries

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diversifying

from

hardware

to

software

(N13KL2)

through

MCAs

acquisition. Obtaining scope-economies from shared investments/costs

across markets, Matsushitas now possession of high-profile movie and
TV-programming to use for its HD-TV would give it a competitiveadvantage over Western rivals Sony (whom they had lagged behind in
audio-visual and entertainment fields).

So here, unlike their European competitors who kept rationalising

manufacturing, through building global brands and then de-skilling
competitors through alliances (Prahalad, 1996), Matsushita established
that an organisations capacity to improve existing skills and learn new
ones may be the most defensible competitive-advantage of all.

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Innovation models and corresponding challenges

faced
Using

local-for-local

development,

model

based

on

subsidiary-based

Philips leant on competitive-innovation

competitive-imitation

(Matsushita),

and

culture

knowledge
rather

that

than

facilitates

innovation builds a sustainable, long-term competitive-advantage.

In this models context, it required three key capabilities of sensing,

responding, and implementing (BB, 2011) where Philips decentralised
and independent NOs promptly sensed and responded to the local
consumer preferences/differences- thus positioning them close to the
markets to sense/respond to the differences made it easier to capture the
local target-market after closely identifying their needs. By accordingly
adjusting to significant local-pressures, Philips could customise its
product-offerings and marketing/distribution strategies fittingly for each
market through decentralised sales and production-subsidiaries and
implement by collaborating with other subsidiaries to exploit the resulting
new products worldwide.

However, the decentralized-approach caused weak coordination between

the independent product-divisions and NOs, given Philips failure to
persuade NACP to sell the V200 videocassette-format, who rebelled and
sold the VHS. This caused Philips difficulties in innovating and launching
new products for local-markets, when it started lagging behind its more
globally-efficient competitors who captured the audiocassette-market

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first. Thus only until integration and knowledge-sharing among units

exist, will firms benefit from their collaborative experiences.
Philips also risked duplicating products, due to lack of communication
between subsidiaries. And inter-subsidiary communication is vital in R&D,
to ensure consistency and unnecessary repetition of ideas. This could
have generated unnecessary costs for Philips: due to this dispersed
approach, coordination on different ideas/projects became demanding
and decentralisation made it difficult to create synergies across the
organisation and capture the innovation, given the autonomous businessunits.

Matsushitas center-for-global model suggested that Japans already

renowned reputation as one of the worlds best innovators in CE
influenced

Matsushita

to

put

its

headquarters

as

worldwide

opportunities sensors at home-country level itself. Matsushitas

centralised resources and capabilities were used to create new
products and technology in the main R&D-center to respond, and
were implemented globally via subsidiaries to the local markets.
Product-divisions maintained strong operating-control over their
offshore operations too.
Unfortunately, Matsushitas highly-centralised R&D operations and tall
structure suggested inflexibility given its numerous hierarchical levelsthis resulted in slow processes to manage fast-moving change in CE
trends and innovation. So when the Japanese economy collapsed in

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2001s tech-wreck recession, Matsushita suffered its first quarterly

financial losses due to its lack of speed and efficacy in responding to the
external-environments technological changes, and thus failing to sustain
its competitive edge.
Although their strategy of depending on other competitors for innovation
is risky yet effective given their strength in imitating competitors
products, here Matsushitas headquarters risked market insensitivity by
not being as aware of local happenings in consumer-trends -thats
essentially

their

main

role.

Basically,

centralised

control

stifled

creativity/innovation at the foreign subsidiaries instead of stimulating it

like Philips did, when this was highly desired for their CE developments
overseas.
This reduced their speed of responses to market changes, when
Matsushita was forced to adopt JVCs own 1975 VHS format, instead of
creating its own in the first place. This concludes that without the right
processes to foster the right innovative and adaptive culture, neither
creativity nor innovation can surface.

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Organisational-models adopted & means of

managing the changes
Philips initially followed a decentralized-federation organisational-model,
based

on

multidomestic-strategy

whose

focus

was

national-

responsiveness. In anticipation of the war, transferring top managers and

research

staff

to

USA

and

England

respectively,

and

thereby

distributing/decentralising its key assets overseas made subsidiaries

more autonomous and self-sufficient, as this model requires. Having own
local plants, Philips subsidiaries could independently modify their
products/marketing-tactics to meet widely differing consumers needs,
e.g. national TV-transmission standards. As this fostered more personal
relationships instead of formal structures, management-style accordingly
encouraged more delegation to occur, eventually creating a loose
federation of Philips national subsidiaries; each focused on its local
market (BB, 2011).
Figure 8. Decentralised federation model

But In 1987, CEO Klugt restructured Philips to globalise both productdevelopment and its currently decentralised and product-matrix structure
into increased control over domestic subsidiaries, aiming for more
efficient scale-of-production. He rationalised Philips operations around
the four global divisions instead of the fourteen PDs, assigning a single
top manager over PDs, NOs and an IPC, thereby eliminating dual

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leadership. This, eliminating inefficient plants and converting some into

International Production-Centers (IPCs) that each served numerous NOs,
consequently increased PD-managers control over NOs and production.
Thus more coordination and growing interdependence between plants
and

NOs

resulted,

creating

higher

production-quality

and

greater

innovation (Holt, 1998).

Conversely, Matsushita developed a centralised-hub organisationalmodel in the 70s to 80s, underlining its global strategy to capture global
scale-economies. Its divisional-structure let headquarters enforce tight
cost/operational control on its foreign-subsidiaries through cross-border
and quality-assurance technology-transfer by expatriating their Japanese
technical-managers, making Matsushita more prompt and effective in
reacting to the fluctuating market-conditions then. This model also
concentrated its main assets and manufacturing to product-development
activities at the center, thus Matsushita retained its culturally and
people-dependent, and communications-intensive management system
(BB, 2011) by also using its headquarters power to control their foreign
subsidiaries, given the short communication channels because of on-thego, expatriate managers.
Figure 9. Centralised-hub model

Although Matsushita had formed its global-competitiveness based on its

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centralized operations, it restructured from centralised to a decentralised

organisation during mid-80s, now focusing on developing innovation in
overseas subsidiaries. Thus Operation Localisation was launched to
heighten creativity and flexibility in overseas branches entrepreneurial
undertakings

through

subsidiaries

expertise,

localising

technology/materials

increasing

local nationals

in

to

improve

key positions

overseas, and distributing capital by shifting production-facilities to lowwage countries. Matsushita also relocated regional-headquarter functions
from Japan to North-America and Southeast-Asian markets, consequently
enhancing autonomy to subsidiaries and their ability to respond faster to
local-market changes and preferences, because of their now locallycontrolled,

own

market

strategy.

Yet

whats

interesting

is

that

Matsushitas managements started adapting/responding to local needs

only after forty years of international operations.

The road to developing transnational

organisations
Simply put, a transnational organisation operates across the world,
simultaneously pursuing a combination of local-responsiveness through
customisation, cost-reduction through standardization and optimum
value-chain configuration (Gupta et.al, 2003). 1990s was experiencing
major changes in the form of new emerging competitors, thus propelling
firms towards adopting this structure.

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Flexible, integrative/multidimensional approaches embody transnationals,

and this capability is typically constructed over time as the organisation
evolves and learns to deal with various types of business problems in
different

overseas

locations.

Thus

through

pre/post-war

portfolio-

diversification and shifting production-facilities- at specific times, Philips

and Matsushita respectively paralleled transnationals, who retain what
works and eliminate what doesnt by emphasising scale-efficiencies,
whilst sometimes pursuing local-responsiveness. Judging which factors
needed to be prioritised and sacrificed e.g. money, physical-resources
etc. made this difficult.
Both firms also possessed distributed yet interdependent capabilities that
characterise

transationals,

with

internationally-located

plants

and

national-subsidiaries achieving global-scale through specialising activities.

E.g.

Philips

efficient

plants

were

converted

into

IPCs

whereby

management regarded each worldwide unit as a source of skills,

capabilities and knowledge that could be harnessed for the whole
organisations benefit, that ensured flexible responses to changing
worldwide demand-and-supply in CE-industry.

So although Philips and Matsushita successfully developed transnationals

in their own way by pursuing different strategic actions at different times,
in

reality,

its

difficult

to

achieve

pure

transnational

strategy/organisation because of the conflicting goals (Hill, 2006) and

risks that they still had to consider in their internal and externalenvironment.
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Conclusion
While Philips and Matsushita may be sustainable in todays CE-industry
(Appendix-1) by competitive standards (e.g. revenue), what strategies
worked for them then may not work now due to ever-changing
circumstances like increased globalisation, and more brand-conscious
consumers

today

etc. Although

both

firms

made

errors

in

their

restructuring whereby certain objectives were not met, more importantlythe transition would have been smoother had both firms employees been
given more time to adapt to their new structure, as is always the case
with radical change. Furthermore, while Philips post-war attempt to
become global leaders wasnt too successful- unlike Matsushita- it still
had capabilities that Matsushita lacked to an extent (and vice-versa), e.g.
its innovative ability to develop new technologies, which made Philips
successful

in

the

first

place.

However,

as environments

change,

Matsushita overtook Philips, who accordingly reacted by implementing a

global model. This highlights that strategy shouldnt be static, and evolve
according to external factors.

Strategic-fit

is

key

to

competitive-advantage

because

it

ensures

consistency among activities, and creates pressures and incentives to

enhance

operational-efficiency,

consequently

making

competitive-

imitation more difficult. Basically, the main underlying challenge that

both organisations needed to tackle to strengthen their position in CE,
was the creation of coherence and fit between their (internal structure of)

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headquarters and subsidiaries. Based on this, both firms success

depends on whether they achieved a right fit at the right time by
effectively utilising the right resources/capabilities, aligned with their end
goals/objectives too.
Thus long-term visions may exist, but only with the appropriate
coordinating and integrating mechanisms, from top-management to
bottom-level employees, can objectives be fully achieved for long-term
success, in both firms.

(Word count: 3298)

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Appendix-1

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Matsushita: Updated Sales and

Profitability

Source: http://www.slideshare.net/jessekedy/matsushita3-presentation

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